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Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Siegelman/Schnauzer Connection, Part II

So how do the Don Siegelman and Legal Schnauzer cases intersect? Perhaps we can illustrate it best with a timeline:

2000--Dax Swatek is campaign manager for Alice Martin in a failed run for a seat on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. (By the way, Sue Bell Cobb, current chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, beat Martin in 2000; I like Sue Bell Cobb more with each passing day.)

2002--Bob Riley defeats Don Siegelman in a razor-close race for governor, a race that includes mysteriously changed numbers in Baldwin County, Alabama, and allegations of electronic manipulation of voting tabulations.

2002--Dax Swatek is identified in a news article as a business partner of Bill Canary. Swatek is quoted as criticizing an effort to remove Canary's wife, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, from the Don Siegelman investigation. Specifically, Swatek's criticism is targeted at one of Siegelman's attorneys, the late David Cromwell Johnson. Swatek says Johnson should be "ashamed of himself" for questioning Leura Canary's impartiality in the Siegelman investigation.

2004--Alice Martin's office in Birmingham leads a prosecution against Siegelman, but U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon throws out the case.

2001-2005--William E. Swatek is the beneficiary of repeated unlawful rulings by Republican state judges in the lawsuit against me. These unlawful actions include judges on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals and the Alabama Supreme Court.

2006--Leura Canary's office in Montgomery leads a prosecution against Siegelman, which ends with his conviction on corruption-related charges.

2007--I send both the FBI and Alice Martin detailed information about specific crimes (honest-services mail fraud, conspiracy) committed in my case by trial judges J. Michael Joiner and G. Dan Reeves, attorney William E. Swatek, and members of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals and the Alabama Supreme Court. Martin informs me that she has sent my complaint to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which does not have authority to investigate an honest-services mail fraud claim. I later discover Martin's ties to the Swatek family, which almost certainly helps explain her efforts to keep my case under wraps.

2007-2008--I start receiving threats from Republican authorities in Shelby County that they intend to seize and auction my house (which is jointly owned by my wife). These threats are based on a 2004 "judgment" against me that derived from multiple unconstitutional actions by Shelby County judges. And the writ of execution and notice of levy upon which the home seizure is based have both been unlawfully developed and served. In short, the threats to seize my house have no basis in law. But they do serve as a threat designed to get me to quit blogging about truths that are uncomfortable for the Alabama GOP. (And given Karl Rove's close ties to Bill Canary and other Alabamians, these truths probably are uncomfortable for the national GOP, as well.)

Over about an eight-year period, we see connections between Dax Swatek, Alice Martin and Bill Canary (and perhaps Karl Rove), leading to the prosecution of Don Siegelman for crimes he did not commit and suppression of a prosecution of several Republicans (including Dax Swatek's father) for crimes they most definitely did commit.

And what about the irony of Dax Swatek criticizing David Cromwell Johnson? Well, for years, Johnson was one of the best known criminal-defense attorneys in Alabama. Don Siegelman hired him around 2002. And about 20 years earlier than that, guess who hired David Cromwell Johnson to help with a criminal defense? Why, none other than Dax Swatek's father, William E. Swatek.

Yep, when Bill Swatek was being prosecuted for perjury, he turned to David Cromwell Johnson to get him off. And somehow Johnson managed to do it, even though evidence available in Swatek's file at the Alabama State Bar strongly suggests that Swatek was guilty.

We will examine Bill Swatek's perjury trial in detail later on. But it seems clear that without David Cromwell Johnson, Bill Swatek would have been convicted and disbarred. Because of his acquittal on perjury charges, Swatek eventually regained his bar card and went on to screw me and a number of his own clients over the years, building a record that is a disgrace to the legal profession.

So you see, Dax Swatek should thank his lucky stars for David Cromwell Johnson. If Bill Swatek had been convicted of a felony and lost his license to practice law, I doubt Dax Swatek would have enjoyed the life of privilege that has fallen into his lap. But not surprisingly, the Daxter is an ungrateful little twit.

As for me, I sure would like to know how David Cromwell Johnson managed to get Bill Swatek off some 25 years ago when the available evidence--if properly presented by prosecutors at trial--clearly showed Swatek was guilty.

I'm just one of many people who have suffered because Bill Swatek was able to regain his bar card and go on to an illustrious career as an "officer of the court."

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

It is ancient history but I think Dax Swatek was involved in a bar fight back in his college days that turned real ugly and ended up with somebody (one of Dax's frat brothers I think) running over some guy twice. There was a manslaughter charge and there is a reported Crim Appeals opinion on it. Anybody out there with Westlaw could find it in a flash.